Hispanic Email Marketing: Potential Boom or Flat-out Bust? [2-A]

Hispanics are even less-targeted via email than direct mail, for which they over-index in response rates. Could this be the next big thing?

Despite the marked proliferation of Spanish language websites, Hispanic email marketing has yet to take off.

"I’m not really sure why this is the case,” says Rick Blume, President of list broker 21st Century Marketing. “Perhaps they feel that Hispanic consumers just aren’t responsive to this sort of marketing.”

Hispanic reticence in response to email marketing would stand in stark contrast to their oft-cited higher response to direct mail. The prevailing theory explaining higher response rates for direct mail offers is that, since Hispanics are targeted so much less via direct mail, they take more interest in these offers.

Following that logic, Hispanics are also likely to be responsive to email marketing directed at them. A recent Vertis study concluded that Hispanics are as comfortable as non-Hispanics providing credit card data online, with approximately 35% responding that they are completely comfortable doing so.

The only explanation for why email marketing to Hispanics has not been actively pursued by marketers is because it has not had sufficient implementation to demonstrate ROI. The question is, then, who will be the first to test the waters on a large scale?

Media Consulting Group also conducts email marketing campaigns to U.S. Hispanics who subscribe to newsletters from their home-country papers. “Basically, when they sign up for the newsletter, they are asked must fill out certain information such as nationality, age, sex, etc. This allows us to even further segment the paper’s readers and better serve advertisers looking to target specific groups of people,” says Almeida.

Editorial Staff

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